cHeal wrote:RIP. I'm really really sad to hear this news. He was easily my favourite MotoGp rider. Really really sad day. I suspect it could be a bit of a watershed moment for biking safety, similar to the Senna crash. I suspect there will be big changes for safety in the next few years, MotoGp cannot afford to allow its riders be killed anymore, it must act. In reality while nobody has died in the sport for some years, that in my opinion is only by chance. Horrible crashes are a regular occurrence and injury is common. Many of the riders on the grid for a MotoGp race are injured.

There were 2 serious injuries in the moto2 FP1. With one rider being thrown violently from his bike, in a scene reminiscent of Giles Villenueves fatal accident. He did not race. Another rider dislocated his shoulder moments before. moto2 race was red flagged 2 laps after an incident that left a rider motionless on track.

The sport is NOT safe, and it simply is not acceptable for Helmets to be coming off. Marco was not just an exciting rider, he was a great character and the grid will definitely be a poorer place for his absence.

There really isn't much more that can be done for safety really. Most of the riders have airbags in their leathers these days. Having seen a very brief replay of the accident that happened to Marco, I'm not suprised the helemt came off. The back of his head was hit by another bike, I would expect the strap to snap from the sheer force of it.

In the three deaths that I mention (and including Marco's) they all came from the rider being hit by other bikes and that's the factor that can never be controlled. If you imagine just running as fast as you can into a wall without slowing down, it gives you some idea of how vulnerable riders are from impacts. Can you think of any way of making bike racing safer other than illegallising it?

Well helmets is an area where things can be improved. Helmets should not be coming off. stronger helmets, stronger straps. Whatever it takes. Double strapping. It simply needs to be looked at but this incident aside, (which was indeed a freak accident, and hard to protect against) there are too many accidents and injuries overall. Increase the airbags in their leathers, or perhaps tether the riders to the bikes because rarely do the bikes maintain massive speed after a crash. Usually it is the rider being thrown from the bike which produces the greater injury, however that may not be desirable in some situations. Regardless, I'm am not intimately knowledgeable on bike racing so my ideas are unlikely to stand up to much scrutiny, but somebody needs to put forward ideas in this area.

Apparently the move to 1000cc engines will improve safety, though I don't fully understand why that is.

Regards the marshals:

That looks like they dropped him, but this is not the Marshals fault. The medical services provided for these riders is simply not up to scratch. In F1 a team of medical staff arrive at the scene of an accident where a driver is injured. Where this happens it should always be the case that a riders life is not left in the hands of voluntary marshals. It should be only medical staff who handle riders in this situation. This has been the case in F1 for a couple of decades. if you look at Senna's crash in 1994, he is attended to by a crew of professionals, and airlifted to hospital. Not dragged from the track by a couple of marshals.

cHeal wrote:Well helmets is an area where things can be improved. Helmets should not be coming off. stronger helmets, stronger straps. Whatever it takes. Double strapping. It simply needs to be looked at but this incident aside, (which was indeed a freak accident, and hard to protect against) there are too many accidents and injuries overall. Increase the airbags in their leathers, or perhaps tether the riders to the bikes because rarely do the bikes maintain massive speed after a crash. Usually it is the rider being thrown from the bike which produces the greater injury, however that may not be desirable in some situations. Regardless, I'm am not intimately knowledgeable on bike racing so my ideas are unlikely to stand up to much scrutiny, but somebody needs to put forward ideas in this area.

Airbags are a new thing and I'm not sure how useful they actually are but it is a developing technology. I think I can safely say that if the forces involved were enough to break the chinstrap on his helment then it was way oustside the scope of what any kind of helmet could have saved him from even if it had somehow stayed on. One thing, riders should never be tethered to bikes, that would be a deathtrap. As soon as the bike an rider are seperated then the rider begins to slow down but bikes generally don't, like this.

As you're a casual race watcher (no insult intended) I'm guessing you're used to seeing 2 of the 3 kinds of crashes - high sides (this is where the rear wheel loses grip, is slides out then it suddenly gets grip again and the rider is usually catapulted over the bars, like being thrown from a horse) which tend to be spectacular and painful and low sides (front wheel loses grip and then 'tucks' and the whole lot goes sideways) these can often be fast but tend not to be that painful. Which leads me onto the next bit.

cHeal wrote:Apparently the move to 1000cc engines will improve safety, though I don't fully understand why that is.

The current bikes are 800cc (ironically brought in to replace the old 999cc formula to make racing safer) which require very high corner speeds to be fast due to a comparable lack of torque (even though the bikes are arounf 230/240 bhp). When you couple the high corner speed with the current tyre rules then it result in crashes in corners, in particular Hi and Low sides. On the 1000cc bikes they will have more power and torque to allow the corner to be squared off, corner speed will be slow ergo less accidents (in theory).Looking at the footage it seems that Marco had either of these but managed to stay on but this put him out of control and heading back into the apex of the corner where he cut accross the racing line line and the rest you know. As strange as it might sound, if he fell off, he would have survived.

cHeal wrote:Regards the marshals:

That looks like they dropped him, but this is not the Marshals fault. The medical services provided for these riders is simply not up to scratch. In F1 a team of medical staff arrive at the scene of an accident where a driver is injured. Where this happens it should always be the case that a riders life is not left in the hands of voluntary marshals. It should be only medical staff who handle riders in this situation. This has been the case in F1 for a couple of decades. if you look at Senna's crash in 1994, he is attended to by a crew of professionals, and airlifted to hospital. Not dragged from the track by a couple of marshals.

In fairness to the marshals, they were doign exactly what they have to do inside current MotoGP rules. It's a very tricky formula. In BSB for instance, in a bad accident they yellow flag it and then a saftey car comes out. This can give the medics a chance to get onto the track if they need to. It's possible we might see some changes like that to MotoGp but they'll need to alter bother fuel and tyre rules to make it work. I'll be happy to see that come in.

Bottom line, I can tell you're just as upset and shocked as I am but Bike racing is sooo dangerous in nature because it's your body that directly at risk and nothing short of (sci-fi mode here) short of personal shields will stop that. Yet racers, continue to race and long track racing is much more dangerous than short and they continue to race on that. I don't know what the answer is, I'm not sure there is one because even if we scale down speeds to 125cc racing, I still think that might have been fatal.

cHeal wrote:yeah im not criticizing the marshals. the whole set up is flawed. marshals should not have touched him.

okay understand why 1000cc is safer now.

I think safer is a relative term

This is one of the worst crashes I've seen and it was back in the 999 days

The two Ducati's come together which causes one of them to slam front brake full on as his hand was mashed. Says a lot about the braking forces that are at their disposal. No one was seriously injured although I think there were a couple of broken collar bones.

Regarding his helmet, any force that is great enough to either snap the strap or wrench it over the riders head is bad news for the rider. I am not sure that strengthening the strap would make an appreciable difference (the head and neck will still channel them and the forces in question would be horrendous) - but I am sure that will be investigated.